Claire Lamarre-Niemi

Claire Lamarre-Niemi

Claire Lamarre-Niemi

"YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE"
20" x 16" 
acrylic on canvas

You I Everything Else" is intended to be a satirical take on the glorification of toxic relationships. Whilst meme culture, ironic-core and complete dumb-foolery on Instagram and Tiktok can't be taken too seriously, I've been recently wondering to what extent it's incessant presence in our hands and in our minds have on our very real relationships. I have found myself using slang for years that I started saying sarcastically and a lot of the art I do now is strongly inspired by idiocy and not-so-niche pop culture reference. "You I Everything Else" plays on the concept of the power couple that doesn't give a fuck about anything else then themselves. Value is found within their loyalty to each other, possibly sacrificing compassion and tolerance, while definitely turning a blind eye to the reality of their messy ass relationship. I grew up on Tumblr and Skins, and at 14 years old I was bombarded by imagery of girls doing drugs, cutting themselves and dating psychopaths. And I thought it was beautiful and magical. Now at 26, I wonder the all-too-real ramifications of the worship of toxicity, and how it's affected my view of love and everything else.

"YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE"
20" x 16" 
acrylic on canvas

You I Everything Else" is intended to be a satirical take on the glorification of toxic relationships. Whilst meme culture, ironic-core and complete dumb-foolery on Instagram and Tiktok can't be taken too seriously, I've been recently wondering to what extent it's incessant presence in our hands and in our minds have on our very real relationships. I have found myself using slang for years that I started saying sarcastically and a lot of the art I do now is strongly inspired by idiocy and not-so-niche pop culture reference. "You I Everything Else" plays on the concept of the power couple that doesn't give a fuck about anything else then themselves. Value is found within their loyalty to each other, possibly sacrificing compassion and tolerance, while definitely turning a blind eye to the reality of their messy ass relationship. I grew up on Tumblr and Skins, and at 14 years old I was bombarded by imagery of girls doing drugs, cutting themselves and dating psychopaths. And I thought it was beautiful and magical. Now at 26, I wonder the all-too-real ramifications of the worship of toxicity, and how it's affected my view of love and everything else.

"YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE"
20" x 16" 
acrylic on canvas

You I Everything Else" is intended to be a satirical take on the glorification of toxic relationships. Whilst meme culture, ironic-core and complete dumb-foolery on Instagram and Tiktok can't be taken too seriously, I've been recently wondering to what extent it's incessant presence in our hands and in our minds have on our very real relationships. I have found myself using slang for years that I started saying sarcastically and a lot of the art I do now is strongly inspired by idiocy and not-so-niche pop culture reference. "You I Everything Else" plays on the concept of the power couple that doesn't give a fuck about anything else then themselves. Value is found within their loyalty to each other, possibly sacrificing compassion and tolerance, while definitely turning a blind eye to the reality of their messy ass relationship. I grew up on Tumblr and Skins, and at 14 years old I was bombarded by imagery of girls doing drugs, cutting themselves and dating psychopaths. And I thought it was beautiful and magical. Now at 26, I wonder the all-too-real ramifications of the worship of toxicity, and how it's affected my view of love and everything else.

"YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE"
20" x 16" 
acrylic on canvas

You I Everything Else" is intended to be a satirical take on the glorification of toxic relationships. Whilst meme culture, ironic-core and complete dumb-foolery on Instagram and Tiktok can't be taken too seriously, I've been recently wondering to what extent it's incessant presence in our hands and in our minds have on our very real relationships. I have found myself using slang for years that I started saying sarcastically and a lot of the art I do now is strongly inspired by idiocy and not-so-niche pop culture reference. "You I Everything Else" plays on the concept of the power couple that doesn't give a fuck about anything else then themselves. Value is found within their loyalty to each other, possibly sacrificing compassion and tolerance, while definitely turning a blind eye to the reality of their messy ass relationship. I grew up on Tumblr and Skins, and at 14 years old I was bombarded by imagery of girls doing drugs, cutting themselves and dating psychopaths. And I thought it was beautiful and magical. Now at 26, I wonder the all-too-real ramifications of the worship of toxicity, and how it's affected my view of love and everything else.

About Claire:

Montreal born and raised, at 26 years old, I have way too many hobbies. I'd consider myself a multidisciplinary artist and EIC/Founder of Bootlegger Magazine. I founded Bootlegger and do art not only to constantly have something to do with my hands, but also because I like to search for ways to connect with people other than verbally.


I am obsessed with trashy North American imagery, contradicting pop culture references and glitter. I don't want to take my art too seriously, and hopefully I never have to!

About Claire:

Montreal born and raised, at 26 years old, I have way too many hobbies. I'd consider myself a multidisciplinary artist and EIC/Founder of Bootlegger Magazine. I founded Bootlegger and do art not only to constantly have something to do with my hands, but also because I like to search for ways to connect with people other than verbally.


I am obsessed with trashy North American imagery, contradicting pop culture references and glitter. I don't want to take my art too seriously, and hopefully I never have to!

About Claire:

Montreal born and raised, at 26 years old, I have way too many hobbies. I'd consider myself a multidisciplinary artist and EIC/Founder of Bootlegger Magazine. I founded Bootlegger and do art not only to constantly have something to do with my hands, but also because I like to search for ways to connect with people other than verbally.


I am obsessed with trashy North American imagery, contradicting pop culture references and glitter. I don't want to take my art too seriously, and hopefully I never have to!

About Claire:

Montreal born and raised, at 26 years old, I have way too many hobbies. I'd consider myself a multidisciplinary artist and EIC/Founder of Bootlegger Magazine. I founded Bootlegger and do art not only to constantly have something to do with my hands, but also because I like to search for ways to connect with people other than verbally.


I am obsessed with trashy North American imagery, contradicting pop culture references and glitter. I don't want to take my art too seriously, and hopefully I never have to!

Interview

et:

We're excited to have you here. To start off, we'd love to
get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do!

et: We're excited to have you here. To start off, we'd love to get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do!

claire:

Super excited as well! Sooo my name is Claire, I am 26 years old, Aries, born and raised in Montreal. I'm a multi disciplinary artist (emphasis on the multi: I have way to many mediums and hobbies lol), but right now I am concentrated on doing creative direction and working on my magazine, Bootlegger. I am definitely an over-achiever and I compulsively stay productive to keep the bad thoughts away, so I work a lot, on a lot of different projects, almost at all time. Right now, I'm working on the mag, studying full time in Design at uni, 30 hours a week server job, doing freelance creative direction gigs and making art on the side (for myself, for fun and for Earth Tones!) 

et:

When told about the theme for this exhibit, how did you begin the creative process?

et: We're excited to have you here. To start off, we'd love to get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do!

claire:

Generally, I don't love being given a theme. I feel it can try to forcefully guide a project and I usually don't enjoy that. But "Magic" is a super fun one, and I felt that it could work with pretty much any piece of my work that I would make for the exhibit. Plus, I learnt in Cegep (in Visual Arts program), the meaning and lore of a piece usually comes during the process of making it, and, you can always kinda bullshit anything into anything (which I DEF DIDN'T DO!!) Anyways, whenever I make a painting I really just try to follow my instincts and make an image that I just desire to engage with and explore. 

My original piece was a colour pencil titled "God is The Space Between Us" and it was about exploring nostlagia and confusion surrounding my own girlhood in the late 2000's, early 2010's. It was an image of My Melody intertwined with a still of that psycho dude, Flipper, when he gashed his forehead open with a beer, from a Daisy of Love episode. As a young girl, I was bombarded by very contradicting imagery and information about what being a girl, and eventually a women, would entail. The pure vs the whore. The prude vs the desired. It was all very confusing, but it made me realize the versatility of women, and I thought how holy is that discrepancy. How beautiful and pretty fucking magical (and sometimes sad) is the power we women have to mold ourselves and tap into different realities of our own person. The only thing though, is that I wasn't super happy with the final physical piece. It looked fine, but I wasn't sure to what extent that piece represented me today and what I actually enjoy making. So I went a completely different route; I made "YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE". It's Shadows, from Sonic The Hedgehog, pointing a gun at us with Amy in his arms. LOL. 

et:

Tell us about your work.

et:

Tell us about your work.

claire:

So, "YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE", is a 20" x 16" acrylic painting on canvas, depicting Shadows and Amy from Sonic the Hedgehog making out in a cemetery. Shadows is pointing a gun at the viewers like a complete gangster, and over them is written "YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE". It's in monochrome red and black, as well as inverted. It's dumb and weirdly evocative, and I love doing that type of shit.

et:

If you were a flavour of ice cream, what would it be and why?

claire:

Something with blueberries. I fucking love blueberries.

et:

Who or what influences do you look to for inspiration?

et: We're excited to have you here. To start off, we'd love to get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do!

claire:

So the reference pic is from @hardimages.v2 on Instagram. A lot of my reference images are sourced from pictures I take of random stuff I find interesting or from Instagram. I am very inspired by uncanniness, the absurd/odd mixed with popular culture references. I love PS2 video games aesthetics or Flickr/Tumblr type images. The sentence "YOU I EVERYTHING ELSE" comes from an image book by the same title by Linn Phyllis Seeger. I didn't read it cause it looked kinda lame ngl, but that title is amazing. And just like how I save everything I find interesting on Instagram, I do the same for sentences, stories, words, etc in my Notes app. I have 447 notes right now on my phone, lol. So I just save everything, whenever I see or hear something that intrigues me, I go through them when I wanna make a piece and see which would work together and I pretty much just build off those image and word banks.

I usually always have different reasons for each piece I'll make. I don't even know if they seem to be made by the same person.. I'm not really into trying to curate on purpose an aesthetic that is similar between each painting I make. So they are all completely inspired by different stuff that I felt like playing around with in that particular timeframe. But I love 80's horror movies, internet lore, the meta American Dream and trash culture (as well as actual trash). Most of my painting will include one or more of these realms and I definitely love mixing them and including unexpected elements or have sarcastic/ironic overtones that puts you right at the limit before uncomfort (?)

et:

What are you reading right now?

et: We're excited to have you here. To start off, we'd love to get to know you! Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do!

claire:

Just Kids by Patti Smith. Very very sad.